Better to Die Childless than Breed White Privilege?

A University of Pennsylvania professor writes she will never have children because she doesn’t want to pass on White privilege.

If you wonder why activists think that, just because sociopath Dylann Roof committed mass murder, you should want the government to disarm you, you might find that Ali Michael can help you understand the mindset. Michael wrote in the Huffington Post in response to the Rachel Dolezal trans racial weirdness, “I Sometimes Don’t Want to Be White Either.”

She writes of being at a stage where she decided not to have children so that she wouldn’t pass on white privilege to the world.

I’m still trying to figure out if she is really over that stage.

There was a time in my 20s when everything I learned about the history of racism made me hate myself, my Whiteness, my ancestors… and my descendants. I remember deciding that I couldn’t have biological children because I didn’t want to propagate my privilege biologically.

If I was going to pass on my privilege, I wanted to pass it on to someone who doesn’t have racial privilege; so I planned to adopt. I disliked my Whiteness, but I disliked the Whiteness of other White people more. I felt like the way to really end racism was to feel guilty for it, and to make other White people feel guilty for it too. And then, like Dolezal, I wanted to take on Africanness. Living in South Africa during my junior year abroad, I lived with a Black family, wore my hair in head wraps, shaved my head. I didn’t want to be White, but if I had to be, I wanted to be White in a way that was different from other White people I knew.

This is all said in the past tense, but it is really unclear to me that she isn’t continuing the same mindset. To her credit, she does seem to realize to some extent, that her urge to be a non-White White was itself a kind of arrogance that one could also easily see as a form of “White privilege.”

But what really comes out is how much more rational, and seemingly nicer Michael’s African “family” was.

I was lucky. The Black family I embedded myself in during my “Rachel Dolezal phase” insisted on my inherent goodness, and that of my family and even – I thought this was a stretch – of my ancestors. They helped me focus on my capacity to make change as a White person.

Sadly, Michael’s “capacity to make change” seems to rely on accusing innocent Whites of the sins of their ancestors so they can fester in the same kind of racial guilt, because “the job of White people lies with teaching other White people, seeing ourselves clearly, owning our role in oppression.”

Okay. Do we get to own our role in being the only civilization to ever condemn slavery and racism too? That idea never came out of Africa.

Of course, the answer is, No, because we didn’t have anything to do with forming that idea. It was bequeathed to us. We have just accepted it from our ancestors. We can’t claim credit for eliminating slavery or condemning racism just like we can’t feel guilty for slavery or racism. They are both in the past.

But if Michaels is okay having biological children now, is that because she has a mission to make them feel like the oppressor class because the sins of their ancestors stain them unless they cleanse themselves with acts of contrition?

The bottom line is that Michaels condemns “colorblindness.” That means she is perpetuating and spreading racism. Period.

And that is the whole purpose of White privilege. It is a new way to make racism socially acceptable.